The Problem With Roses
by Catastrophic Bacon
Summary: After being tasked with cleaning up the mess her semblance has left around Beacon, and then being ditched by her friends, Ruby comes up with a plan to sort out the mess and get back at her traitorous teammates. One-shot.


**AN: First time writing a RWBY one-shot and first time writing with Ruby as the main character. If you have any constructive criticism please let me know in the reviews.**

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 **Beta reader/editor: Wyncrer the Sage**

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The WBY of Team RWBY stared in open mouth shock at the dozen garbage bags full of rose petals that Professor Goodwitch had telekinetically dumped on their doorstep, while Ruby tried to make herself as small as possible under the stern teacher's gaze.

"Miss Rose, do you know what I have here?" Goodwitch questioned the young leader.

"Ah, rose petals?" Ruby answered in a guilty murmur.

"Indeed. And I'm sure you can also imagine where they came from?"

"Probably from my sem-" Ruby started before seeing the professor's glare. "Rhetorical question. Got it. Shutting up now."

"When the Janitorial staff first complained about having to clean up excessive amounts of rose petals, I thought they must have been exaggerating the situation. Until today, when I received that Beacon's waste management was unable to deal with the rest of the school's rubbish because of theses petals," Goodwitch explained.

Ruby felt the eyes of her teammates on her as she wilted underneath the blonde teacher's glare and wished that her semblance was instead one that would allow her to sink into the floor.

"So, I have decided that the one to solve this problem should be the one who caused it." The words had Ruby looking up at her teacher in dismay. "Be aware that you are not to scatter the roses across the school grounds, as this would only take the situation back to square one with the janitorial staff cleaning up after you."

"Isn't that a little harsh Miss G?" Yang spoke up. Ruby looked up to her sister in relief, of course Yang would have her back in this, she reassured herself.

Goodwitch, on the other hand, fixed Yang with a glare that told her exactly what she thought of Yang's name for her. "These petals here are just what has been collected this week." The words had Yang's face falling in disbelief, while Weiss loudly face-palmed. "Let this be a lesson to you not to overuse your semblance when it isn't necessary." Having said all that she needed to, Professor Goodwitch turned and left the girls with the bags.

The four girls looked at the bags arrayed in front of them. Each one was as tall as Ruby was, and filled to the point they looked they were about to burst. Ruby knew dealing with all this wasn't going to be easy, but she had no doubt that if they worked together they would find a way to deal with this.

"Well could luck Rubes, I'm out of here," Yang announced as she stepped out of the door.

"Wait!" Ruby begged. "Where are you going? Aren't you going to help me sort this out?"

"Well, uh-" Yang drew a blank as she tried to come up with an excuse to leave.

"Training. We have a training room booked," Blake said, coming to Yang's rescue.

"Yeah, exactly. Training stuff. Gotta get there before someone takes the room," Yang agreed.

Ruby watched in dismay as the two partners disappear out the door. Remembering the final member of the group, Ruby turned to her last chance of support in her task with her best puppy dog expression. Weiss, having experienced the effects of Ruby's puppy dog expression, looked up at the ceiling and made a point to not look down at her partner.

"Weiss?" Ruby pleaded. Still the Schnee heiress refused to look down.

"Professor Goodwitch said this was the responsibility of the one who caused it. Besides, I have to do some studying in the library."

Ruby gasped in shock at the declaration as she realised her entire team had abandoned her.

"But Weiss!" she tried one final time but the heiress was already out the door, leaving her alone with the daunting task spread out before her.

Ruby was starting to realise just how difficult this was going to be by herself. If Yang was here, Ruby could have had her sister set fire to the petals, but Yang would be in the training room by now and she had taken her weapon with her.

Since the bags were blocking up the corridor, Ruby didn't want to test Goodwitch's patience by waiting for Yang to get back. Goodwitch had also made it explicitly clear she couldn't scatter the petals around Beacon as that would just bring them back to square one, same for putting the petals back in the trash.

It was then that Ruby had a burst of inspiration. She could dump the bags off the edge of Beacon's cliffs and into the Emerald Forest!

Ruby ran, without using her semblance, to the furthermost bag, grabbed hold of the black plastic, pulled and went nowhere.

Undeterred, she adjusted her grip and heaved with all her might. Five minutes and half a meter later, Ruby conceded that she needed a new plan. There was no way she was going to be able to get all of these to Beacon's cliffs.

As Ruby stood with her hands on her knees, breathing heavily from her failed effort, a memory from her childhood in Patch formed itself into an idea. Not just any idea, but one that allowed her to get back at her traitorous teammates.

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Weiss stood in the corridor staring intently at her team's dorm room door with one hand stretched part way to the handle. It had been a few hours since she had gone to the library, and while the fact that the bags were no longer outside the room was a good sign, a part of her dreaded what she might find inside her room.

Her partner had never been good with cleaning up a mess, a genetic trait if her sister was anything to go by, so the heiress could only wonder what Ruby had done with the petals.

"Hey Ice Queen," a cheerful voice called down the corridor from the direction of the training rooms. Weiss pulled her hand back to her side and greeted her returning teammates. "Hello Yang, Blake. How was your training?"

"Pretty awesome," Yang replied as the default spokesperson for herself and Blake. "So, were you just planning on standing out here until someone else came along or were you actually going to go in at some point?" Weiss' face flushed with embarrassment at being called out on her trepidation, causing Yang to burst out laughing.

"Can you blame me?" Weiss defended. "You of all people should know how unpredictable your sister can be."

"Oh come on, she's not that bad," Yang laughed. Weiss and Blake simultaneously raised one eyebrow in disbelief.

Yang's confidence faded slightly in the face of the matching expressions, but she pushed on regardless and, with a quick swipe to unlock the door, stepped into team RWBY's room to see everything was…

Surprisingly normal.

Everything was just how the girls remembered leaving it. The beds were made, books, school related or otherwise, were either shelved or stacked neatly and clothes that been lying on the floor were still lying on the floor. Amongst all this normalcy was Ruby, sitting on her bed and playing with her scroll.

Weiss and Yang, having expected at least some change, stood fixed in the doorway, looking in as though taking another step would set off a mine.

Fed up with waiting and tired from training, Blake pushed past her teammates and made straight for her bed. Upon arriving at her destination, she collapsed sideways onto her bed, only for the pressure to send rose petals exploding out from under her sheets and the inside of her pillow.

Yang doubled over laughing as Weiss gave a smug smile at being proved right. The cat faunas sent a glare at Ruby, the usually intimidating expression collapsed, as a petal floated back to land on Blake's nose making her sneeze. Ruby laughed at her successful prank as Yang and Weiss walked further into the room.

"See Weiss, it's nothing worth getting worked up over. Ruby used to do this all the time back in Patch. Honestly, as pranks go, rose petals under your sheets is pretty harmless," Yang said as she walked over to the closet to grab a change of clothes for a shower.

"While I admit that is an inconvenience at worst," Weiss explained from her position by one of the room's desks. "There is no way she could have put all the petals-"

Weiss' words died in her throat as she watched Yang open the closet, only to be knocked down by a sea of red petals. The blonde brawler hit the ground and was quickly buried by the avalanche of red.

When after a few seconds Yang didn't emerge, Weiss turned to Blake, hoping to use her reaction to help her decide how she should be reacting to this crazy situation. However, instead of paying attention to the collapsed blonde, Blake was instead going through her book collection. Every book was being taken off its shelf, opened wide and upended as petals rained down from between the pages and into a growing pile on her bed.

Weiss looked to her leader to see the hooded girl rolling around on her bed laughing. The sight was enough to make Weiss once again doubt Ozpin's decision for leader.

Desperately seeking an escape from the madness that was her room and her teammates, Weiss sat down at her desk with the intent of getting more study done. She reached for a draw to retrieve a pen but paused.

At first, she wasn't sure why she did, all she knew was some instinct had screamed at her to stop. Then she realised what had set it off. Ruby had stopped laughing. Slowly, as though it were a creature of Grimm behind her, Weiss turned. Ruby was indeed no longer laughing, instead, she was watching Weiss eagerly with a mischievous grin across her face. Weiss tentatively moved her hand closer to the draw and the grin grew. She then moved her hand back to where she had originally paused and the grin also went back to its original size.

Realizing the danger this grin heralded, Weiss moved her hand to the desk's second draw. This time when she looked back at Ruby it was to see her pouting. Weiss then moved her hand back and forth between the two draws, watching Ruby's expression shift from pout to grin and back to pout.

 _Honestly,_ Weiss thought to herself. _Sometimes she is too easy to read_. It was with this in mind that Weiss confidently pulled open the second draw and nearly shot out of her chair as petals exploded out and rained down around her. She didn't even need to look to know Ruby was laughing. The girl was so loud people outside could probably hear her.

Blood boiling, Weiss stormed over to her hysterical teammate and grabbed her by the collar. "I'm, haha, sorry, hahaha," the huntress-in-training apologised through her laughter. "I swear that's the last of it in here."

Weiss was ready to verbally, and maybe a little literally, tear apart her partner when part of her last sentence made her stop. "What do you mean _the last in here_?" The question brought a quick death to Ruby's laughter.

"Well, ah," Ruby started nervously, scratching the back of her head as she hung from Weiss' grip. "There wasn't enough room to hide it all in here so I, ah…"

Jaune and Pyrrha were walking side by side through the corridor as they made their way back to their dorm.

"So Jaune, did Ruby actually tell you what she needed your scroll for?" Pyrrha asked with a smile.

"Nope. Not even when she gave it back. All she said was it was an emergency and she looked pretty desperate so I gave it to her," Jaune explained.

While she would admit she was curious, Pyrrha was sure Ruby had just been exaggerating and let the situation go with a shrug.

The pair soon arrived at their door, and while Jaune reached for his scroll, Pyrrha grabbed the handle ready to open it the moment it was unlocked. Jaune swiped his device against the lock, and with a quick pull, Pyrrha opened the door and, in doing so released, a surge of red petals just above knee height.

Pyrrha reflexively braced against the wave, while Jaune had his legs swept out from under him with a startled yelp.

"I'm sorry," Pyrrha cried out as she tried to fish her partner out of the petals. As she pulled Jaune to his feet, Pyrrha couldn't help thinking in the back of her mind, _where had all these rose petals come from?_

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 ** _AN: If any of the people following A Guild Like No Other are reading this, chapter 9 is being written and shouldn't be too much longer._**


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